Walnut Creek woman’s “Dance With the Devil”

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Barbara Bentley with her husband, John Perry at the Inaugural Ball in Washington D.C., January 20, 1989.Bentley is the author of "A Dance With the Devil", about her husband . (Copy photo courtesy of Barbara Bentley)

Barbara Bentley, author of A Dance With the Devil, about her husband, Monday, October 27, 2008 in Walnut Creek Calif. Bentley holds a February 15, 1991 photo of her with bruises on her face. (Contra Costa Times / Bob Larson)

Barbara Bentley was a stable, 35-year-old lab technician working on a college degree when she met Rear Admiral John Perry at a dinner with friends.

Though several years her senior and wearing an awkward toupee, the military man drew the pretty Bentley in with tales of the battlefield and comrades lost. His stories, which she eventually discovered were fabrications, fooled her until the day he tried to murder her in a secluded hotel room in Washington, D.C., nine years into their turbulent marriage.

“Good psychopaths can charm the birds out of trees,” Bentley says of the couple’s first meeting.

Psychopath. It is a word Bentley has used frequently, ever since Perry pinned Bentley to the hotel room floor and held a rag covered in ether against her face.

These days she’s happily remarried, and spends her time speaking about domestic violence. And now she is retelling her story in a book.

“A Dance With the Devil,” released this week, is a first-person account of how she was romanced by a professional criminal and how, after losing her home and almost being murdered, she fought in Sacramento to change California’s no-fault divorce law.

“This is a critical story for today’s relationships,” Bentley says from her Walnut Creek home where she and her husband of 11 years, Rex Johnston, make award-winning wines.

Back when she met her first husband, Bentley says, she was like many singles today, unaware of the dangers of trusting someone a little too much. After that first meeting over dinner, the new couple began a romantic courtship. Perry soon moved in with her and the couple began spending their way through credit cards and taking out loans. They married, traveled around the world and bought pricey art.

Perry told Bentley he had a multi-million-dollar inheritance coming to him, one of many tales he spun to keep her happy, interested and involved.

He wasn’t a rear admiral, either.

Nine years into their marriage, everything was falling apart. Bills were piling up. Perry’s lies and half-truths were becoming less believable. When Bentley did some research into Perry’s background and confronted him with his deceptions, he tried to kill her.

If the details sound familiar, it’s because you may have heard them before. Bentley gained local and national media attention for her struggle to change a strange loophole in California’s divorce law that allowed Perry to collect alimony after their separation, even though she was a victim of attempted murder at Perry’s hands.

“I said, ‘They need to change the law,’ so I worked to change it,” Bentley says.

Early in the 362-page book, which reads like a memoir, Bentley doesn’t sound nearly so tough. It’s obvious to the reader that Perry is a swindling predator, and Bentley emerges as doe-ish prey, too easily impressed with the charming stories and fancy lifestyle to question, say, a visit to her home by federal agents or the disappearance of her husband’s Congressional Medal of Honor.

She is not uncomfortable with this depiction of herself. “Psychopaths do not have a conscience, they have no moral compass,” she says. “This man fooled the Navy (into letting him onto bases, giving him work contracts and inviting him to special events). I have no embarrassment that he fooled me and fooled my friends.”

Her relationship with Perry was also fraught with psychological abuse. He threatened to leave her when she questioned him, and she was afraid to be alone.

The book, which includes pictures of the couple during happy times and a photo snapped of a bruised Bentley after the suffocation attempt, took her more than 15 years to write. Now that it’s finished, she says, she hopes it will help others avoid toxic relationships or do better research into the background of a potential mate.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” she says, “and I am anxious to get this story out there.”